Lost in cyberspace

Slowly, we are getting back into the swing of normal life here. Recovering not only from the holidays but also from cyperspace chaos. Taiwan’s Christmas day earthquake, in addition to loss of life and property over there, knocked out six out of the seven submarine telecommunications cables that link Asia with North America. At first when we could not get on-line (or make phone calls as our international phone service is linked to the computer),we thought it was just a temporary problem in our building. Slowly, we all learned this lack of Internet was a regional problem. Boats were dispatched to the site of the cable problem and things looked grim. Now, five days later, the Internet is somehow back up and running, re-routed through different routes.

Connectivity aside, we had a nice Christmas here with all the usual trappings; a Nutcracker performance, Christmas Eve services and of course a tree. The tree came to us in typical Hong Kong pre-earthquake Internet fashion. I sent an email inquiry to a suggested Christmas tree farm in November and never heard anything back. Phil and I were just starting to look into the various venues to get a tree, when I heard back from the original tree source. ( IKEA offers a decent tree for about $50 USD, which is pretty good price in the States and definitely a good price here). The email said our tree would be delivered the next day at 3pm. Not sure what to expect, we got a beautiful nine foot Scottish pine the very next day. And the tree came with no discussion of price. I figure the tree guys know that people with three excited little kids, dazzled by the tree are probably good for the money at some point, even if that point is January.